Borkmann's point

47

Something gnawing away from inside? Or a creeping numb ness? A movement going nowhere?

Something like that. That’s roughly what it felt like. Insofar as she could feel anything at all.

The time that still existed was for the fading rhythms and needs in her own body. In this deadening darkness day and night no longer existed; time was split into fragments: She slept and woke up, stayed awake and fell asleep. It wasn’t possible to judge how long anything took; it might be day outside, or it might be night… perhaps she had slept for eight hours, or was it only twenty minutes? Hunger and thirst cropped up merely as faint signals from something that didn’t concern her, but she ate nevertheless from the bowl of bread and fruit that he replenished now and again. Drank from the bottle of water.

With her hands chained together, her feet too, her mobility was greatly restricted, and not just by the room; she lay curled up under the blankets, almost in the fetal position. The only times she stood up were when she needed to use the bucket… crouching down and groping her way forward. The smell from the bucket had troubled her at first, but soon she no longer noticed it. The overwhelming smell of soil was the only thing she was constantly aware of, the thing that struck her the moment she woke up, that stayed in her consciousness all the time… soil.

Interrupted only by the pleasant smell of tobacco when he sat in the chair and told her his story.

The enormous fear she had felt at first had also ebbed away.

It had vanished and been replaced by something else: a heavy feeling of lethargy and tedium; not hopelessness, perhaps, but an increasingly strong impression that she was some kind of vegetable, a being that was gradually fading away and becom ing an apathetic, numb body… a body that was increasingly indifferent to all inner pressures, thoughts and memories. The all-enveloping darkness was eating its way into her, it seemed, slowly and relentlessly penetrating her skin… and yet she realized that this might be her only chance of surviving, her only chance of not going mad. Simply lying there under the blankets, maintaining her bodily warmth as much as possible.

Letting the dreams and fantasies come and go as they wished, without paying too much attention to them… both when awake and when asleep.

And not hoping for anything. Not trying to imagine or think about what might be the final outcome. Just lying there.

Just waiting for him to come back and continue his story.

About Heinz Eggers and Ernst Simmel.

“No,” he said, and she could hear him tearing the cellophane off his new pack of cigarettes. “I don’t know if it was already over when she came back from Aarlach. Or if there was still a chance. Of course, it doesn’t make any difference now, after ward, there’s no point in speculating… things turned out the way they did, and that’s that.”

He lit his cigarette, and the flame from his lighter almost blinded her.

“She came back, and we didn’t know whether to hope or have doubts. We did both, of course; you can’t carry on living in a state of constant despair, not until you’ve achieved that final insight; but it’s probably still not possible, not even then.

In any case, she refused to live at home with us. We found an apartment for her in Dunningen. She moved in at the begin ning of March; it was only one room and a kitchen, but quite big, even so. Light and clean, on the fifth floor with a view over the sea from the balcony. She was still on the sick list and could only work part-time. Detoxified and attending therapy, so it should have been OK… she worked afternoons at Henkers.

We discovered later that she couldn’t handle it, but we knew nothing at the time. We didn’t interfere; didn’t want to give the impression that we were checking up on her. It had to be on her terms, not ours, some bloody self-important, know-it-all social worker had insisted. So we kept in the background, stayed out of the way… damn pointless, all that. Anyway, she lived there that spring, and she managed, we thought, but her income, the money she had to have for the things we thought she didn’t need anymore, well, that came from guys like Ernst

Simmel. Ernst Simmel…”

He paused and took a deep drag on his cigarette. She watched the glowing point moving around and suddenly felt an urge to smoke herself. Perhaps he would have given her one if she’d asked, but she didn’t dare.

“One evening at the end of April, I drove out to visit her for some reason or other. I’d hardly been there at all since she’d moved in. I can’t remember why I went; it can’t have been any thing especially important, in any case, and it disappeared from my head the moment I got there…”

Another pause, and the cigarette glowed again. He coughed a few times. She leaned her head against the wall and waited. Waited, and knew.

“I rang the doorbell. It was evidently broken, so I tried the handle… it wasn’t locked, and I went in. Entered the hall and looked around. The bedroom door was half open… I heard noises and couldn’t help looking in. Well, I was able to see him getting full value for his money…”

“Simmel?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

More silence. He cleared his throat and inhaled again.

Stabbed out the cigarette on the ground, and stamped on the glowing ash with his foot.

“As I stood in the doorway, our eyes met. She looked straight at me over the shoulder of that shit… they were standing pressed up against the wall. I think that if I’d had a weapon with me at that moment, an ax or a knife or whatever,

I’d have killed him there and then. Or maybe I’d have been too paralyzed… those eyes of hers, Brigitte’s eyes as she allowed that man to have his way with her, it was the same look I’d seen once before. I recognized it immediately; she was seven or eight then, and it must have been the first time she’d seen starving, dying children and understood what was involved… some television report from Africa. It was the same eyes that had looked at me all those years ago. The same desperation.

The same feeling of helplessness when confronted with the evil of the world… I went back home and don’t think I slept a wink for a whole month.”

He paused and lit another cigarette.

“Was it the same year that Simmel moved to Spain?” she asked, and was surprised to discover how strong her curiosity was despite everything. To find that she was listening carefully to his story and that she was affected by it as if the wounds were her own… that her own predicament and despair were perhaps no more than a reflection and an example of some thing far, far greater.

The totality of suffering in the world down the ages?

The overall power of evil?

Or it might just be that damn obstinacy everybody talks about. My obstinacy and peculiar strength… and the fact that

I always keep putting off having that baby…

Or maybe a bit of both? The same thing?

If that was the case, what the hell did it matter? Her thoughts wandered off and she could no longer find the thread. She clenched her fists, but after a few seconds could no longer feel them. They turned numb and evaporated; in the same inevitable way as her vain efforts to follow a line of thought.

“Yes,” he said eventually. “It was that same year. He van ished that same summer… came back last spring, as did the other two. Surely it has to be a sign when all three suddenly turn up in Kaalbringen within a few weeks of each other.

Don’t try to tell me that it’s just a coincidence. It was a sign from Bitte. From Bitte and from Helena, it’s so damn obvious that you can’t possibly ignore it… Will anybody be able to understand that?”

There was a sudden sharp edge to his voice. Indignation at having been wronged. As if it wasn’t in fact he himself who was behind it all. As if he was not responsible for these murders.

As if…

Merely an instrument.

Something that Wundermaas had said came back to her possibly not word for word, but the gist-something about there being a necessity behind most murders, a compulsion that was stronger than anything behind other actions; if that was not the case, they would never take place, never need to be carried out.

If there was an alternative.

Necessity. Sorrow, determination and necessity… yes, she understood that this was the way it was.

Sorrow. Determination. Necessity.

She waited for the continuation, but there was none. Only his heavy breathing that cut through the darkness, and it struck her that it was this very moment, at this second, when time had stood still, that he was making up his mind about her own fate.

“What are you going to do with me?” she whispered.

Maybe it was too early. Maybe she didn’t want to give him time to think it through.

He didn’t answer. He stood up and backed out through the door.

Closed it and locked it. Shot the bolts.

Once again she was alone. She listened to his footsteps fad ing away and huddled up against the wall. Pulled the blankets over her.

One left, she thought. He has one more to tell me about.

And then?

And then?